This fire spread about 400% overnight. I'm from a small town about 20 minutes up the road from ventura, the evacuation zone is right on the edge of the city limits now. Luckily everyone i know that lives out that way evacuated safely and it's been nothing but property damage so far.

It truly is a shame that these fires are causing such a mess. I pray for the families involved. It is also ironic that such devastating events can produce such incredible photo's. Like they say, a pictures says a thousand words, and this picture says a lot of what we are going through in these times.

I'm trying to understand how steemit works. How did this post earn $87? I've seen other posts with the same # of views, likes, and comments but not nearly as much earnings. Just trying to understand the system.

Greetings! Votes here are weighted according to the stake held by the voter in the system. The more money someone has as Steem Power in their wallet, the more their vote counts towards payouts. This post received votes from a few people who have relatively high levels of steem power and so it's payout was quite high.

Isn't there a risk to content quality if people can essentially "buy" their power? And couldn't groups of "powerful users" choose to only upvote each other, therefore promising distribution to the powerful and limiting distribution to new/ less powerful but higher quality content?

the image is a clickable link that goes to a video that I uploaded. yes, the post is far less valuable to me than most of my posts which contain large amounts of my own, original writing - but this is a platform that rewards subjectively - which means it is anarchic and does not conform to any single person's expectations.

Yes, this is one of the main complaints about steemit and I complained about it a lot when I first started. Instead of giving up I learned how to use the system so that when I make quality content I get supporters. Once we get support from the community - for our own merits - then we will be upvoted and the rest follows.
The counter argument to the issue about vote stake weighting is that there is no money to pay anyone unless investors stake money into the system - so the ability for them to determine who gets paid out is one that is considered undesirable to detach by those who have most control over the rules.

I didn't realize the image was clickable (new idea for a product suggestion), the post is still recycled news - I shared that exact same video on Facebook a couple days ago. Honestly, I'm not too concerned with earning Steem via content creation, I'm more interested in earning Steem via product suggestions and ultimately using Steemit as a platform for finding the most interesting and original content available (right now, it's a hit or miss with lots of misses). While I understand the current voting mechanism (namely, the ability to purchase voting power and "control" payouts) helps to fund the technology, it's ironically centralizing power on a platform that is supposed to be decentralized.

Yes, I agree about the centralisation issue and that is why I stopped using steemit quickly after starting months ago. I run my own social network that is entirely non commercial and I actively work to completely end the use of money on Earth. The reality though is that it is very, very difficult to live in Britain without money and so I like to do things that bring me money which are in alignment with true principles of liberation and free will.

I continued using Steemit because I found that in actuality, many of the 'whales' here who have the ability to make big upvotes and draw content to the attention of others as a result are actually decent folks who think similarly to me - so I got support. The system is certainly not perfect and I work, as a witness, to improve it - however, I meet resistance from those who are not so open to change as I am.

btw, downvotes typically harm the reputation of the receiver unless they are higher than you in reputation - it's generally not a great idea to downvote content willy nilly as you can get involved in a war which sees your own reputation sent down the toilet fast. I don't do that and am not threatening you or anyone here - but I have seen many newish users have to shut down their account because of 'excited' use of downvoting.

I've yet to downvote although I've flagged--- it's not clear exactly what that does to either party. If downvoting is so punitive regardless of its relevance, what's the point of having a downvote feature? Either way it seems trivial in comparison to the larger issue at hand which is
the overt centralization of power. I'm optimistic this will work itself out in the long haul, but Steemit has a lot of work to do.

flagging is basically downvoting - they are different words for the same thing in the steemit world.
flagging is intended to be a mechanism for removing abusive, spammy posts from the system - once a post goes into negative payout it becomes hidden in the site. it can still be unhidden so it is not completely censored, but it will be less obvious than other posts.

flagging also lowers the reputation of the person being flagged and removes their payout - but it is all relative to the reputation and steem power of the person doing the flagging. a user with lower reputation can flag someone with a higher reputation but it will not effect the reputation of the one being flagged at all. the idea is that respected members of the community (based on their ability to gain reputation and upvotes) will have the ability to quieten people who go against the will of the community - although there is no way to completely remove or completely silence anyone under any circumstances (afaik).

ultimately the centralisation of power is a problem that is a reflection of the entire concept of money itself and the capitalist ideology of imbalance that our societies are structured with.. so it's no surprise that a social network based on similar mechanisms will have similar problems. if you read the whitepaper you will see there is built-in allowance for redistribution of wealth here.

i have never bought any steem with money and everything i have had from this site has been a result of my own effort to provide value here - you can either provide value in terms of posts, services or in terms of financial 'stake'.

Congratulations @ura-soul, this post is the fifth most rewarded post (based on pending payouts) in the last 12 hours written by a Superuser account holder (accounts that hold between 1 and 10 Mega Vests). The total number of posts by Superuser account holders during this period was 1082 and the total pending payments to posts in this category was $5519.33. To see the full list of highest paid posts across all accounts categories, click here.

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